Anna Ottendorfer

Meet Anna Ottendorfer (1815-1884), a 19th-century media mogul. She emigrated from Germany at the age of 22. She married a printer, Jacob Uhl, who later bought a German language newspaper, The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. 

Anna and Jacob were both active in the business, upping the publishing schedule from three times a week to daily. At one point, the Staats-Zeitung had a circulation equivalent to the New York Times and the New York Tribune. They had 6 children, 4 of whom survived her. After Uhl’s death, she married then-editor Oswald Ottendorfer and continued to manage the business until near the end of her life. 

She was a generous philanthropist with a particular focus on the well-being of women and children, healthcare, and education. The Isabella Home for Aged Women (named after a daughter who predeceased her) is among the many NYC institutions she funded that is still going strong today.

When the business converted from private to a stock fund, Anna Ottendorfer called for a 10% dividend on their annual salary for employees, later raised to 15%. In her will, she also left employees $25,000 (the equivalent of $8 million today). Her estate was worth $3 million, or the equivalent of $1B in wealth today.

Her funeral was the largest up to that time in NYC; Carl Schurz gave the eulogy.  

She was a badass who deserves to be better remembered.

𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘴: 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘞𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘱𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢